“Walkman” for the 21st century

I do like the look of this. It has BT connection and the AA battery compartment is  no more with a lithium-ion battery charged via USB C. Gives 10 -12 hours play time.

Also has line-in so the mix tape is back!

Developed by a French team, some of whom worked for Thomson Electronics.

About £140.

As someone who grew up with cassette tapes (and ‘vinyl’), it always bemuses me that some people choose to suffer such inferior audio quality, not to mention all the added hassle of having to transport the physical media, with things like this. I remember being overjoyed by the advent of MiniDisc, which was infinitely better than cassette tapes. I admire the spirit of trying to keep things alive, but some things just need to be allowed to die a quiet, dignified death.

I like the idea of it in principle, but why would anyone bother when a phone can do all of it. And better in every way tbh.

Because when you are doing a multi day paddle in a sea kayak you mighy want to save your phone for essential uses like emergency calls, weather etc. A small mp3 player will give hours of music and an FM radio on one charge.

Cassettes can get in the bin. It’s a no from me

Walking around with a head full of music….. it’ll never catch on.

It’s kinda cool but £140 for a retro style tape player…really…sorry, it’s a no from me!

As above, mobile phone is much better, or if sea kayaking or whatever a Sansa/Sandisk ‘clip’ would surely be a better solution? You can get waterproof ones, and ones that support FLAC/lossless etc. for a lot less dosh than that, so it’s not such a burn if it gets trashed..

It’s a fun sounding toy but I reckon after one or two uses it would sit on the shelf as another gadget that doesn’t get used but you look at once a year and say ‘i should really get that out more’ but never do.

Solution looking for a problem

Samsung Galaxy S8 with a PAYG SIM, no apps just spotify with playlists & podcasts downloaded in airplane mode with battery saver on.

MP3 player with backup mobile. Job jobbed. 

Far too big, not enough runtime. Would much rather have something like the Panasonic RQ-S55 I had in about 1990 – smaller, and with the single AA battery pack you could attach had something like 30+ hour runtime.

It’s a fun sounding toy but I reckon after one or two uses it would sit on the shelf as another gadget that doesn’t get used but you look at once a year and say ‘i should really get that out more’ but never do.

Yeah, something I’d buy if I had money to burn, but I don’t have enough cassettes to justify getting one. (And most of the cassettes I do have are probably albums I could just stream off Spotify, anyway…)

Tapes were shit the last time round. Why would we want them back ?

Also the problem with tape cassettes, is not just the low fidelity, the tape degrades too, making it sound worse for reasons I can’t be bothered to go into, and also the tape snapping.

Any one else remember surgically wrapping a bit of sellotape around a broken bit of tape to ressurect one? still works fine apart from the awefull noise it makes when the repaired section of tape passes over the heads? heheh!

It seems like a toy for **** tbf, at that price. I mean, I still have a box of tapes, I suppose a walkman-ish thing with bluetooth and modern battery life and such could be quite fun but it’d also have to be cheap, because the direct alternative is a cheap standalone mp3 player for about £25 that will do the job better.

I can (sort of) see the appeal of vinyl. But cassettes were a shit medium, their only advantage being portability, which has been usurped.

About £140.

I’d be interested to see which tapedeck they’ve used. Having watched a number of Techmoan videos on YT  there are few manufacturers left and most of them are pretty awful iirc.

And where do you buy the cassettes from? Do you need to download then record to black tapes? 

life is far too short for that type of faff. 

And where do you buy the cassettes from?

Quite a few bands have started releasing their albums on cassette

I don’t get it at all. Vinyl through a decent system sounds amazing, better than MP3….. cassettes….just no!

Quite a few bands have started releasing their albums on cassette

Jezz.. I’d love to see the sales/cost figures on that, nevermind the terrible Eco credentials…

Vinyl, I can kinda understand but tape cassette? just WHY? it’s shyte! that would be like coppying a 4k film to VHS!

Unless you’re U2 streaming gets you pennies so the best revenue is from touring and selling merch. Tapes are retro cool and unlike Vinyl easier to transport on tour and take home afterwards.

Cassette tape sales at 20-year high

Cassettes encourage piracy!!!!111   😉

@johnnystorm is right. There is nobody making a decent mechanism any more – hell, its hard enough to get a decent CD mechanism as there are only a few manufacturers left let alone tape!   I don’t think it can cope with metal tapes and has no dolby.

You can pick up the same thing in a plastic case on amazon for a quarter of the cost if you really want to but quite honestly, whilst I still buy CDs and Vinyl I think cassettes is a step too far. They just don’t give you anything apart from hassle.

Funnily enough I’ve just bought a Chase Bliss Generation Loss Mkii guitar effecf pedal designed to mimic all the audio failings of audio and VHS tapes for a LoFi sound. Even mimics tape snagging and crinkling.

The only thing its missing is a BiC biro to rewind the tape back into the cassette.

I bought a Sony ‘professional’ Walkman in HK airport in 1992, good at the time but my £60 Sony mp3 players are so much better.

Big question is does it have Dobly? Because I listen to a lot of heavy metal.

Cassettes can get in the bushes all down the side of the A13. It’s a no from me

FIFY

I got rid of my cassette deck over twenty years ago, and not once have I missed having it.

I was never a dobly

I saw an eBay shop selling new metal TDK C90s for about £350 each the other day

Yeah this looks ridiculous, though having said that the Audio Technica Sound Burger portable record player was reissued not long ago and sold out in a blink

it doesn’t even have a ‘mega bass boost’ button on it.

pfft.

You’d be better off just getting something like this:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/225954080256?hash=item349be9a600:g:Ua0AAOSwPcNlny7k

It even has a built in belt clip 😀

Because when you are doing a multi day paddle in a sea kayak you mighy want to save your phone for essential uses like emergency calls, weather etc. A small mp3 player will give hours of music and an FM radio on one charge.

you did look at the picture in the OP?  It’s about as practical to take on a multi day seakayak trip as a bean to cup coffee machine!

if I needed music on a seakayak trip (I’ve never felt the urge – listening to nature is better) then a battery pack to keep phone topped up would probably be better – as then it’s charged for all uses!

I still have PTSD from repairing twin deck boom boxes in the little TV and video repair shop I used to work in.

It was a bloody miracle if you got them working 100% after the first reassembly. The only thing I hated more was camcorder repairs.

I like cassettes, it’s my childhood.

At £150.00 though, I think they’ve got the decimal point in the wrong place. You can get a real one off eBay for twenty quid and rubber bands aren’t expensive.

Pffft, casettes. I remember trying to keep the last remaining seismic acquisition system that still had to record to tape running for a couple of years. We would have half a dozen 3590 drives in bits in the lab continuously being fixed for every trip and you couldn’t rewind them with a pencil 😭

All the cool kids want the new Sound Burger portable Bluetooth record player by Audio Technica